Database

In the European Union, there is no general principle for the use of copyright protected material comparable to the fair use/fair dealing principle in the US. Directive 2001/29/EC defines an optional, but exhaustive set of limitations from the author´s exclusive rights under the control of the “three-step test”. This is a clause in the Berne Convention that establishes three cumulative conditions to the limitations and exceptions of a copyright holder’s rights. The Directive has been transposed by Member States with significant freedom.

The Finnish Copyright Act implements the Directive providing a close list of limitations to the copyright use.

There are reports that Finnish tax authorities treat the movement of ownership of shares in a Finnish company into a foreign company as a taxable event.

There are no restrictions to mergers and acquisitions above those applicable for competition reasons. However, a licence for a telecommunication service may only be transferred within a group of undertakings. If in an acquisition process the effective control in respect of the licence holder changes, such a change shall be notified immediately to the licencing authority. In that case, the Government will decide on whether to cancel the licence within two months of the notification (Section 18).

The Managing Director shall in all events be resident within the European Economic Area, unless the registration authority grants the company an exemption from this requirement.

In Finland, at least one director and one board member must be resident of the European Economic Area.

It is reported that the right of access to public procurement is limited to regional trade agreement partners and members of the WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement.

The European Regulation No. 1042/2013 amending the Council Implementing Regulation No. 282/2011, declares that from January 2015, all supplies of telecommunications, broadcasting and electronic services will be taxable at the place where the customer belongs. These include, inter alia:
- images or text, such as photos, screensavers, e-books and other digitised documents e.g. PDF files;
- music, films and games, including games of chance and gambling games, and of programmes on demand;
- online magazines website supply or web hosting services distance maintenance of programmes and equipment;
- supplies of software and software updates advertising space on a website.

Both EU and non-EU suppliers have to register for VAT purposes and comply with the relevant obligations of the Member State where the customer is established, has his/her permanent address or usually resides. This may be burdensome as there are 81 VAT rates across the 28 EU countries and the rates may vary between 3% (Luxembourg) to 27% (Hungary) across member states. Furthermore, member states impose varying thresholds at which companies must begin paying VAT, ranging from EUR 0 to EUR 60,000.

As an alternative to obtaining multiple VAT registrations in each Member State where a supplier has a customer, affected suppliers may be able to opt to account for VAT across the EU via a a web-portal in the Member State in which they are identified. Hence, the system, known as the Mini One-Stop Shop (MOSS) scheme, allows taxable persons to avoid registering in each Member State of consumption.

The EU Copyright Directive allows “fair compensation” for copyright owners. As a result, several Member States have imposed national levy systems.

In Finland, the remuneration is collected through levies on media and equipment. Payment is due upon import, when products leave the site of the manufacturer and upon distribution to the local market. The following rates apply:
- Recordable CD, DVD, Blu-ray and MiniDisc-discs: EUR 0.2 memory max 1 gigabyte, EUR 0.6 memory over 1 gigabyte, max 10 gigabytes, EUR 1.2 memory over 10 gigabytes, max 25 gigabytes, EUR 1.8 memory over 25 gigabytes.
- External hard disks (incl. flash/SSD): EUR 9 memory minimum 50 gigabytes, max. 250 gigabytes, EUR 12 memory over 250 gigabytes, under 1 terabyte; EUR 18 memory minimum 1 terabyte, max. 3 terabytes.

Furthermore, the following rates apply to devices:
- Digital recorders with integrated storage capacity, for example, MP3-recorders and set- top-boxes with hard disks: EUR 4.
- Memory over 512 megabytes, max. 1 gigabyte: EUR 7.

Estonia requires an "administrative contact" for domain name applications. The administrative contact needs to be a citizen of Estonia with an Estonian personal identification code, or an European Economic Area (EEA) citizen.

The European de minimis threshold for import duties is harmonized. Goods with a value of up to 131 SDR / 150 EUR / 198 USD are exempted from customs duties. The VAT de minimis threshold is not harmonized within the EU and can vary between 10 and 22 EUR, i.e. Member States can decide on a value within this range to grant an exemption on VAT for imported goods.

According to Estonia's de minimis rule, goods with a value of up to 19 SDR / 21.98 EUR / 29 USD are exempted from VAT.

The EU Directive on Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) covers traditional broadcasting services as well as audiovisual media services provided on-demand, including via the Internet. According to the AVMS Directive on-demand services are not subject to any explicit, strict content quota, but Article 13 imposes on Member States the obligation to ensure that on-demand service providers promote European works. The Directive has been implemented by Member States in different ways, ranging from very extensive and detailed measures to a mere reference to the general obligation to promote European works.

Estonia has implemented Article 13 via two obligations between which video-on-demand (VOD) providers can choose:
- They have to use tools which give prominence to European works such as displaying a substantial proportion of European or French-speaking works on the home/front page and highlighting European works, including works completed within the last five years.
- They have to contribute financially to the production and rights acquisition of European works which is usually fulfilled by investing in the production or rights acquisition of European works.

In Estonia, there has been a number of court cases focusing on online newspapers' responsibility in case of defamatory user comments. At the national level, the Estonian courts found that Delfi AS should have prevented ‘clearly unlawful’ comments from being published in the portal’s comments section, even though Delfi had taken down the offensive comments immediately after it had been notified about them. In October 2013, a Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights decided unanimously that the domestic courts’ findings were a justified and proportionate restriction on Delfi’s right to freedom of expression.

The Directive 2000/31/EC (E-Commerce Directive) is the legal basis governing the liability of Internet Services Providers (ISPs) in the EU Member States and includes a conditional safe harbor. The Directive covers any type of infringement of third-party rights, including intellectual and industrial property rights and personality rights.

The limitations on liability in the Directive apply to clearly delimited activities (mere conduit, caching and hosting) carried out by internet intermediaries, rather than to categories of service providers or types of information. While it was not considered necessary to cover hyperlinks and search engines in the Directive, the Commission has encouraged Member States to further develop legal security for Internet intermediaries.

Since not all Member States have transposed the relevant articles consistently, the national case law is divergent and leads to legal insecurity on an EU level.

The transposition of the e-commerce Directive in Estonia by the Information Society Services Act follows closely the wording of the directive. It does not provide a special regime for hyperlinks, information location tools and content aggregators.

Under the Directive on Data Retention, operators were required to retain certain categories of traffic and location data (excluding the content of those communications) for a period between six months and two years and to make them available, on request, to law enforcement authorities for the purposes of investigating, detecting and prosecuting serious crime and terrorism. On 8 April 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) declared the Directive invalid. However, not all national laws which implemented the Directive have been overturned.

In Estonia, the national law imposing the obligation of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and communications providers to retain data is still in place. The retention period is 12 months.

In case of managerial or supervision work, a foreign service supplier must have a salary that is at least equal to the average in Estonia multiplied by 1.24.